When it was originally released a few weeks ago, NVIDIA's GTX 560 Ti impressed us with its excellent performance coupled with a highly accessible price. NVIDIA's board partners have been quick to offer up some of their own custom overclocked versions and in this roundup we take a closer look at four such cards from ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte and MSI....

The MSI looks like the clear winner from a bang-for-buck perspective. Great temps (lower clocks probably the reason), and OC in line with the other 2 non-Giga cards. OTOH.... Giga's offering pre-binned chips which reach higher levels right out of the box than any of the other cards were able to reach no matter what voltage was thrown at them.....

I would definitely recommend the MSI card seeing as i have two of those running at the one i can have installed in my temporary motherboard while i deal with my GB board issue can run at the core 1.017GHz and memory 2353 MHz. I'm not sure why Sky didn't push his further as i had no issues getting either of my cards to this with vcore max. The temperatures are rather cool on the MSI card as well.

I noticed you said that the ASUS GTX560 could not reach 1GHZ no matter how much voltage you added, is this correct?

I know sample cards vary but I also picked up the Asus TOP version and can hit the speeds his GB SOC was able to achieve when OC'd with a little voltage (1.125V core) roughly 1025MHz as well as over 4800MHz on the memory. I haven't determined the max memory setting yet as I have just maxed out all the sliders in the default Asus SmartDoctor settings other then the voltage as I mentioned. I'm sure I can get a little more core if I max out the voltage at 1.15V but I'm happy with my results as its stable in all the benchmarking programs and games I own. Not too mention its very silent and cool temperatures (under 70C load).

The Giga SOC and MSI 560s do seem to be the cards to beat for value and performance so I do agree with the review. I got lucky and received a solid ASUS TOP card and got the results I was hoping for as I hear they have great RMA service in the GTA now for piece of mind. Another great review SKY!

I would definitely recommend the MSI card seeing as i have two of those running at the one i can have installed in my temporary motherboard while i deal with my GB board issue can run at the core 1.017GHz and memory 2353 MHz. I'm not sure why Sky didn't push his further as i had no issues getting either of my cards to this with vcore max. The temperatures are rather cool on the MSI card as well.

Probably for the same reason as anything else in the overclocking field. It goes on a Case by case basis. Not all cards can OC the same. Much like CPU's.

ST

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As I mentioned in the overclocking section, adding a reasonable amount of voltage did very little in terms of overall performance so I decided to keep vcore at the default settings. Remember, most of these cards already have over-reference voltage values in order to push their core clocks to the levels they are currently at.

nice review. Seems MSI have hit the nail on the head with all of their current gen cards for excellent temps and very low noise. I would go MSI if buying one. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe MSI honours their warranty if you OC using MSI afterburner (which is a great OC program). Nice to know you can OC without voiding warranty.